Chapter 174: Chapter 174 - Around Town
Marybeth shuffled into the kitchen rubbing her eyes.
Iyisha was already sitting at the small wooden table while Abuela stood at the stove, flipping eggs in a worn iron pan.
The smell filled the house.
Marybeth froze.
A man appeared behind her, half dressed, fumbling with his shirt while trying to slip quietly toward the door.
He nodded awkwardly at the room.
"Uh... morning," he muttered.
Then he hurried outside before anyone could say anything else.
Marybeth stood there, stunned.
Abuela didn’t even turn around.
"Buenos días," she said calmly.
Marybeth blinked.
Then Abuela added, still cooking, "Did you use a condom?"
Marybeth’s head snapped toward Iyisha.
Iyisha lifted a brow.
"Abuela!" Marybeth blurted, her face turning bright red.
She dropped into a chair and covered her face with both hands.
Abuela finally glanced over her shoulder.
"You should have woken up earlier," she said in English, perfectly calm, "if you didn’t want me asking that."
Iyisha chuckled under her breath.
Abuela turned back to the stove and continued cooking like nothing had happened.
Outside the open window, chickens clucked and scratched in the dirt. Somewhere down the road a truck engine rumbled to life.
Hydetown was waking up.
"How was the party?" Iyisha asked.
Marybeth lowered her hands slowly, still red.
"It was... okay," she said.
She rubbed her face and leaned forward on the table.
"Those guys just needed an excuse to party."
Iyisha smiled faintly.
Marybeth looked around the room.
"Where’s Malcolm?"
Iyisha shrugged.
"I don’t know."
She hadn’t seen him since the night before.
She didn’t even know if he’d slept beside her.
All she knew was that when she woke up...
He was gone.
Marybeth finished the last of her eggs and pushed the plate away.
"You want to walk around town?" she asked.
Iyisha blinked at her.
"You sure?" she said. "You don’t look like you slept much."
Marybeth shrugged, then glanced quickly over her shoulder toward Abuela with a sheepish expression.
"I’m fine," she said.
Then she leaned closer and lowered her voice.
"Can’t stay here any longer," she muttered.
Iyisha chuckled.
Marybeth straightened again and pointed at her with the fork.
"You, on the other hand, look like you could sleep another day."
"I’m not that fragile."
Marybeth smirked.
"You shut down for six days."
Iyisha opened her mouth to argue, then paused.
"...Fair," she muttered.
Abuela set two more tortillas on the table without turning around.
"You girls should go," she said in Spanish. "Fresh air."
Marybeth stood immediately.
"See? Doctor’s orders."
Iyisha sighed but pushed her chair back.
"Fine."
They rinsed their plates, thanked Abuela, and stepped outside into the morning air of Hydetown.
The streets were already busy. People moved between buildings carrying tools over their shoulders or pushing carts filled with scrap metal and crates of vegetables.
A group of men rolled a cart stacked with engine parts toward the machine yard while two women argued loudly over the price of something at a small stall.
Farther down the road a man hammered metal plates onto a fence, sparks bursting in bright flashes.
The town felt alive.
"¡Buenos días!"
"Morning!"
People greeted each other as they passed.
Marybeth smiled and greeted them back. The expression on her face, which had been crestfallen for days, finally looked lighter.
Iyisha glanced around at the houses and the people moving between them.
"Why did you leave this place?" she asked. "It’s a good town."
Marybeth followed her gaze down the street.
"Yeah," she said after a moment.
"It is."
They walked past a group of children playing near a corner. Two of them rolled old tires down the street while another chased after them, laughing loudly.
Marybeth watched them quietly.
Then she sighed.
"It’s still a religious town," she said.
She kicked a small rock out of her path.
"Reya and I were... kind of a problem for them."
Iyisha glanced at her.
"They didn’t like that?"
Marybeth gave a small, humorless smile.
"Well, homophobia didn’t disappear with the apocalypse."
She glanced toward the houses behind them.
"Abuela hated Reya."
Her smile turned bitter.
"She wanted me to have a man."
Iyisha kept walking, staring ahead.
Marybeth had always seemed comfortable swinging both ways, but she had fallen hard for Reya.
They walked in silence for a few steps.
Marybeth continued watching the children chasing the tires down the road.
"Sometimes," she said slowly, "I think Reya and I weren’t really right for each other."
Iyisha looked at her.
Marybeth shrugged lightly.
"She’s dead now," she said. "So... not really a discussion to make."
Iyisha hummed quietly.
"I think you’re still grieving," she said gently.
But even as she said it, her thoughts drifted somewhere else.
To Malcolm.
To the way he had looked at her the night before.
To the way he had walked away.
Marybeth noticed the shift in her expression.
"How are you and Malcolm?" she asked.
Iyisha sighed.
"We got into a fight last night," she said. "He basically told me I could go fuck anyone I wanted."
Marybeth chuckled softly.
"Sounds like Malcolm."
Then she tilted her head slightly.
"Or... not."
Iyisha hesitated before asking quietly,
"Do you think Malcolm is afraid of a relationship?"
Marybeth stopped walking.
She studied Iyisha carefully for a moment.
"I don’t know Malcolm well enough," she said honestly.
She started walking again.
"But I do know something else."
Iyisha waited.
Marybeth glanced sideways at her.
"...you’re the one who’s going to get hurt."
Iyisha let out a small chuckle.
Too late.
She was already hurting.
That warning had come months too late.
She sighed quietly.
"Marybeth!"
A voice called from the distance.
Iyisha turned.
Mateo was walking toward them from the road, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He wore the orange band the town guards used during patrol.
Marybeth raised a hand.
"Hey!"
They walked over to meet him.
The road curved toward the community gardens where rows of vegetables stretched across a wide-open patch of land. Chickens wandered between the fences while goats bleated somewhere behind a wooden pen.
"Morning."
"Morning," Marybeth replied.
Iyisha smiled politely and greeted him too, though her attention drifted back toward the gardens.
People moved between the rows carrying baskets of produce.
The place was bustling.
Alive.
Men worked in long rows of vegetables, bending over the soil while talking loudly to each other. Chickens wandered between the paths, pecking at the ground. A few children ran between the garden beds, laughing as they chased each other around the wooden fences.
It was an oddly idyllic kind of life.
Iyisha watched it quietly.
It reminded her of the Heart Community.
Maybe that was why the place felt so familiar.
For a moment she almost forgot everything else.
"ERF sent another message yesterday," Mateo said casually.
The words snapped Iyisha out of her thoughts.
Her head turned slightly.
Now she was listening.
Iyisha looked at him.
"The ERF?" she asked.
Mateo shrugged.
"Yeah. They’ve been sending out orders lately."
Iyisha kept scanning the garden while Mateo spoke, trying not to seem too interested.
"They’re saying there are people who might already be immune to the virus," he said.
His tone suggested he didn’t believe it himself.
"Every community that reports one gets a reward."
Iyisha’s heart stopped.
She turned toward Marybeth.
Marybeth was already looking at her.
Her eyes had widened.
Fear flickered between them.
Mateo noticed the look.
"What?" he asked. "You two know someone?"
Marybeth answered quickly.
"We met someone like that in Whitewater."
Iyisha held her breath.
"But the gang killed him," Marybeth added.
Mateo clicked his tongue.
"Tsk."
Iyisha swallowed hard.
The strength suddenly drained from her legs and she sat down on a nearby tree trunk.
Mateo and Marybeth sat beside her without much thought, continuing the conversation casually. Marybeth glanced at her.
"You heading to New York, right?" Mateo asked, looking straight at her.
Iyisha glanced at Marybeth.
Marybeth looked away for a second.
Guilty.
"Yeah," Iyisha said finally. "We’re looking for someone."
Mateo raised his brows.
"Oooh. No one really goes there anymore," he said. "After the bombing half the city collapsed."
He scratched the back of his neck.
"There’s not much reason to go."
She had heard about the bombing when New York was overrun with the undead.
The ERF had announced that no one was left alive inside the city.
But everyone knew that couldn’t possibly be true.
Cities didn’t empty that cleanly.
Still, almost no one questioned it. The bombing had been presented as the only way to contain the outbreak in New York.
And it hadn’t even worked.
Iyisha frowned.
"But there’s the New York safe zone," she said.
Mateo looked at her like she had just said something strange.
"Never heard of that."
Iyisha’s heart dropped.
No.
That was where Cena had gone.
Mateo shrugged, adjusting the rifle on his shoulder.
"I also heard they’re doing experiments there."
Iyisha blinked.
"Experiments?"
Mateo nodded.
"Government stuff."
He glanced back toward the gardens.
"But there’s a medical facility near the border," he added. "I heard it’s a small community that takes in sick people."
He shrugged.
"Maybe that’s what you’re looking for."
Iyisha looked at him.
Hope flickered in her chest.
"Maybe," she said, and for the first time since leaving Ohio, she wasn’t sure of their direction.
